New success story: warfarin self-testing

Struggling with busy and time-consuming anticoagulation clinics, Pendleside Medical Practice implemented warfarin self-testing with the engage app. They wanted to reduce the time commitment for nurses and patients alike and found some surprising benefits.

Supporting Royal Cornwall Hospital’s hospital DVT clinic

The Royal Cornwall Hospital’s DVT clinic cares for specific patients with complex health needs, managing anticoagulation, providing patient education and an induction service for warfarin. Andrew McSorley is Lead Anticoagulation Nurse at the clinic and has used INRstar for several years. As well as supporting dosing decisions, INRstar has an interface to the hospital’s laboratory system which speeds up the communication of lab results and minimizes the risk of human error.

Andrew explains:

“All of our INRstar patients have very complex health needs; some of them have other identified haematological problems, the remaining patients are renal dialysis patients; a specific patient group we have taken on at the clinic in order to manage their anticoagulation safely. Patients have their blood taken whilst they are at the hospital for other treatment and we are then able to supervise their anticoagulation, as well as helping to educate them on managing their regimen.”

Enhancing patient safety

Andrew continues:

“I use INRstar on a daily basis and I find it to be a very intuitive system. A key user benefit for me is the assurance of patient safety. The interface to the lab system is particularly helpful as results come straight back from the lab and are filed directly into the patient medical record in INRstar thus avoiding potentially harmful result transcription errors”

“INRstar removes the need for us to have to seek out further medical approval for the majority of dosing as we don’t have to bother doctors to check complex dosing decisions”.(INRstar’s secure role based permissions allow efficient allocation of workload between staff of different skill levels) .

“Using INRstar makes it very simple for us to manage patients. Patients will arrive, we take their bloods (intravenously), they will go off for a coffee for an hour and then come back to get their results and dosing sheet or alternatively their dosing sheet will be forwarded in the post. Some patients have their bloods taken at their GP surgery, with INRstar results again being sent through later.”

“The system also helps me to carry out the patients’ annual review, quickly and easily,” explains Andrew.

“We introduced INRstar as a way of improving patient safety in anticoagulation. Formerly, dosing could be erratic, but we now have a system that works well and means patients get results automatically. INRstar works really well for us and we are looking forward to continuing using the system to help us with future developments.”

Posted by LumiraDx Care Solutions

LumiraDx Care Solutions is the home of INRstar, the UK’s market-leading anticoagulation clinical decision support software (CDSS) and engage, the patient app, which offers a range of self-care programmes for long-term conditions. engage was ‘Highly Commended’ in the Best Healthcare App category of the Building Better Healthcare Awards, November 2017.

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